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Showing posts with the label New Mexico

With a Tear in my Eye

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There are a few things about me that ponder and amuse my friends.  My being a Yankees fan, an adulterated one at that, is one such point.  Ions ago my Grandmother and her sister would watch Cubs games, as they lived in Hammond, IN.  Cubbies fans pretty much describes that side of the family.  None-the-less, back in the '80s the Yankees sucked and you didn't have the glory of the internet to make them easily accessible.  Then in college there was the 1996 World Series.  Any baseball fan knows the story of how the Yanks won the first title since 1978.  Those same fans know the story of Jorge, Pettitte, Mo, and Jeter.  I won't bore you with the history of the core four.  What I will tell you is that in many ways watching the four of them fade from the game in various stages of retirement makes me wrestle with my own memories. In 1996 I was a junior at Kentucky Wesleyan College.  Imagine being a Yankees fan in Kentucky? I was.  I ...

Rereading Kerouac

Not long ago I made mention that I wasn't sure if I would want to have a beer with "the girl in Birks" who moved here in 2000.  Wild eyed with untamed hair in shades of auburn with blondish highlights, her peasant blouses with tattered jeans, and tanks with long hippie skirts, leather knapsack on her shoulder and gypsy scarf around her neck spoke of her age more than anything else.  In college she had read Jack Kerouac's On The Road no less than twenty-five times; always scenting the air with clove cigarettes and littering the desk floor, and any flat surface with beer bottles.  Sadly, or maybe aptly, they were not uber cool micro-brews.  Back then Miller and Bud Light called to her on Kentucky nights.  One of the roommates--Mere--"borrowed" the cherished book, but that should really read she "lost" the novel in the forlorn flat surface with papers, clothes, and trinkets.  Most just call it a desk.  Shortly before graduation the mysterious flat...

Heather.

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In light of the upcoming Naked Baby Angel Day holiday, and my known in-difference and often contempt for it , I bet many thought I would be spilling all kinds of ruckus humor at the latest infusion of candy coated pink and red assault of late. Yea, if I hadn't just gotten the news that I did you can bet your candy coated fingers and diamond studded jewelry that I would be. But . . . as life goes crap happens and February can now officially piss off. Tonight I got to read the news that an old friend and former grad school roommate died. Pisser indeed. You might remember mention of Heather from the Dave Diaz posting.  I met Dave via her, and rifling through my memories connects to two together in some ways and divides them apart in others.  Heather and I met by chance in Las Cruces, back in the fall of 1999. We were living in the grad apartments, and we shared the bathroom. Well, we quickly teamed up and moved off campus. We had a quaint little two bedroom on Foster R...

New Mexico

My Las Cruces days seem like a million miles away, yet on days like today they appear so damned close that I almost think I can blink my eyes and I will be right back there. Cruces wasn't exactly my favorite place to live, but New Mexico is most certainly a "land of enchantment" in my mind. To this day, some of my favorite memories and sights are the early morning sunrises, sunsets, and vistas found there. I can still close my eyes and smell chilies roasting, smell streetside and roadside stands selling burritos and tamales, and I can still feel the dust in the air coating my skin and laying on me like a forgotten blanket. Those are the good points. Good memories. And then, there are days like today that bring back memories for different reasons. My old roommate sent me a message on the handy dandy Facebook system (that once again put us in touch--cliche, I know). Anywho . . . her message wasn't as humorous as yesterday when we giggled over a drunken photo of u...